The new reality

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the football season passes. So intense and all consuming whilst it is present, and yet we now enter a 12-week abyss filled only with commercial tours to far flung money pots and tedious transfer speculation. Those 12 weeks feel like an age.

This summer, however, will be a little different for Spurs fans. This summer we will bask in the glow of more incremental improvement on the pitch, and we will sob quietly in to our pillows as more images emerge of the 'decommissioning' of the Lane.

But most of all we will approach a summer with a genuine sense of anticipation for the season to come. Never before in my lifetime could I honestly say we would be genuine title challengers. But that is the stark reality and it demands a different mind set on and off the pitch.

As fans we have to avoid the trap of entitlement that I've referenced before. We have to maintain the wide-eyed innocence of a new experience (and the raucous atmospheres that are inextricably linked to it). Perhaps the move the Wembley and the desire not to allow it to derail our progress will see a redoubling of the passion?

On the pitch, for once, I don't have many, if any, concerns. It seems inevitable that Kyle Walker will leave, maybe other squad members will too, but the commitment of the manager to his 'project' means I have little concern.

We will replace those who depart and supplement with lads from the Academy (perhaps making a profit along the way) and we will deliver on the pitch, again.

Whether it's enough to take the final step and put silverware in the cabinet only time and luck will tell. What is sure is that every season under Pochettino the team has absorbed the lessons of the prior campaign. The emphatic ending to the 2017/18 season is a classic case in point.

With second place and automatic Champions League qualification secured we could easily have seen a dramatic drop off in intensity, minds firmly on the beach or the post-season jaunt to Hong Kong. Not a bit of it, not with this group. If anything they cranked up a gear or three literally eviscerating Leicester and Hull in a 13-goal orgy across two away trips in the space of four days.

In truth it could, perhaps should, have been double figures in both games.

Whilst those results were meaningless in terms of league position, they demonstrated both an emerging ruthlessness and a hunger to deliver a message.

This is a new Spurs, and I like it. A lot.

Jonathan Adelman is a season-ticket holder at Spurs, and also co-manages North London Raiders B in the MGBSFL

On the pitch, for once, I don't have many, if any, concerns. It seems inevitable that Kyle Walker will leave, maybe other squad members will too, but the commitment of the manager to his 'project' means I have little concern.

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